


Manhandled With Care

by Nadja_Lee



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Love, M/M, Past Abuse, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-01-28
Updated: 2001-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22970251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadja_Lee/pseuds/Nadja_Lee
Summary: Scott thinks about the past and present and the people who meant the most to him.
Relationships: Jean Grey/Scott Summers, Logan (X-Men)/Scott Summers
Kudos: 168





	Manhandled With Care

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Sorcieré. Thanks for your kindness and friendship.
> 
> Thanks to Christina for the Beta.
> 
> Special thanks to my beloved friend Jemi. Without you I’ll never write more Scott/Logan.

**Manhandled With Care**

Part 1:

I was born a rainy day in autumn. Well, actually I don’t know when I was born and for a very long time it didn’t matter either. There were no family to celebrate it with or give gifts. But in my thoughts I have always had birthday on a day like that. I guess I picked a day in autumn because I didn’t see myself as a summer child, all happy, smiling and carefree or as a Christmas child for I sure wasn’t no present or wish coming true for any of the people in my childhood. Spring was out of the question too because spring is a time of new life, warmer weather and good feelings of love and I didn’t see much of that. So, only autumn was left. It is a sad time where the year is ending, leaves is falling and the weather gets colder. That seemed more like me and what I saw through my first years of life. I imagined it’ll rain on my birthday for if the sun shined then I’ll be wanted as the sun always is but I wasn’t. So, a rainy day in autumn it was.

The first years of my life I spent in an orphanage. It was loud, small and very impersonal. Feelings wasn’t anything you showed and any signs of weakness would either be explored or ignored. I quickly learned to live within myself. I rarely left the orphanage as there wasn’t many opportunities to do so. My powers manifested themselves when I was five or so and I had to close my eyes to the world. I didn’t see the world but I heard it. I felt it. And mostly I didn’t like what I found so I lived within myself. Behind my closed lids I travelled to far away countries where I had never been, I saw incredible beauty and wonderful colours but my most beloved fantasy was having a family. A father who’ll be proud of me and a mother who’ll always be there for me. Maybe even a brother. A kid brother who’ll be there for me and we’ll do things together. In those dreams, those fantasies, I was never alone. I always had someone. In my own way, I was happy.

All that changed as I turned fourteen. I had just gotten my glasses, forcing me to open my eyes to a world covered in red. Then Jack came and became my foster father. I remember how happy I was when I first heard it. Someone wanted me! I was living on a cloud for weeks until he came. I read extra hard to try and catch up on all I had lost when I was blind so he would be proud of me. He came and took me to what was to be my new home. It was a small apartment in Queens in a bad neighbourhood but I didn’t care. All that mattered was that I had someone. Someone who cared. My illusion of Jack as a caring father soon broke as the first stroke fell. The feelings which ran through my head is very hard to explain. You have to have been there, seen it, felt it, to understand. The emotions one go through…hurt and betrayal but also shame and very much fear. There is no way to tell the thoughts going through your head as you waits alone in the dark, jumping out of your skin by the smallest sound, afraid to move but afraid to stand still too. It wasn’t the beatings themselves I feared though they hurt like Hell. It was the not knowing when it’ll happen, the uncertainty which broke me and threatened to overpower me.

It was his not caring which hurt me the most. Even now if someone was to ask if I love my foster father I’ll have to think it through. One would think I’ll hate him but I don’t. I still want him to be proud of me like I wanted as a child. Inside….a part of me will always love him for after all….he’s the first father I ever knew. I want to remember the few good times we had, like one time we went to town and he brought me a lollipop. I never ate it and I keep it still. It is one of the only things he have ever given me and to this day it remains one of my dearest memories from my childhood.

Looking back, however, more often than not I see the beatings and the feelings which ran through me. I never felt I was good enough. I believed him when he said I’ll never make it. His words ran through my head constantly and some times I can hear those words inside my mind even today. I remember the beatings, the blows and the blood. I remember I believed him when he said it was all my fault. That I always made him act that way even though he didn’t want to hurt me. That I forced him to do it. I remember the shame I felt at the marks he left and I always tried to cover them up so no one ever noticed. After all; it was my fault. Jack had said so and I had believed him.

Now I know; I was manhandled….with cruelty.

Part 2:

It was first when I turned eighteen that my life should change again and this time to the better. I met Xavier for the first time. He took me in and for the first time I felt loved. He lived here in New York in a big mansion and never had I seen so big and beautiful a home. He introduced me to his friend, or rather soul-mate as I, being the romantic I am, will call him; Eric. He is a man which I have always held in high respect not only because of our shared yet different love for Charles as Eric calls Xavier, but also because he is a man who have suffered all his life and still pulled through and came up on top. I have always regretted that a difference of dreams and ideologies separated them. Xavier….Charles as I can call him in my mind, was very sad long after that. He seemed to age several years in a few days. I tried to help him, be there for him but I wasn’t Eric and never could be. We shared a bond of father and son while Eric shared one with him as lovers do. One day I pray that they can find each other again. I believe there is still time. They both deserve some happiness. True that in the war they now fight; I fight at my father’s side…at Charles’ side, but I would never hurt Eric and hope I’ll never be forced to.

After our small family fell apart and Eric left the mansion, Charles and I drifted a little apart. Not much but still enough for me to notice. We didn’t share feelings all that often and although we share a psychic bond it is not the same. I do understand Charles’s reasons for acting as he did. He hurt and to look beyond that, to survive, he needed to cut himself off as much as he could. Even from me. He wanted to concentrate on the dream. I had never had something to fight for besides myself and so I fought for him and his dream. No one told me that there was more than one dream nor did I in my mind realise that a father should still love a son even if he choose another dream and another side in a fight. Looking through the years I know that I wouldn’t have chosen differently but I should have been allowed a choice. I would have liked to have been given an option and a saying in it all so I could decide if I wanted to be Cyclops, a X-man and a leader or if I was fine just the way I was; just being Scott Summers, son of Xavier in anything but blood.

Charles and I got closer after he had gathered the first students and I began teaching but most of our emotional closeness was gone and I regretted that. For a long time and in my heart still, there lives a dream of things returning to the way they were when Eric was here. Just Charles, my father, his soul-mate, Eric, and me in a mansion of beauty, in a family bond together by love.

Looking back I realise many things. My love for Charles was always obvious and even though my abused heart, soul and mind wouldn’t let myself say his given name more than a few times when Eric was here; I said it in anything but words. I did try though, to break free. To say his name but Jack’s words still hang in me and I feared his rejection, I feared punishment but above all; I feared the loneliness which his rejection would bring with it. 

Even after all this time; I have only one complain regarding my relationship with Charles and that is his treatment of me just after his break-up with Eric. My opinion was never asked and now I know that I was manhandled……with paternalism.

Part 3:

When I was twenty- two I met Jean for the first time. I had never met anyone like her ever before. She seemed like a Goddess to me. She was wise and always in control. Our match seemed…logical. There wasn’t any real feelings in our relationship, it was an arrangement of convenience. She needed someone to go with her when she went places, going to conferences and doing speeches. When I think back I know now that our attempt at a relationship was a mistake. She succeeded in holding up the business front. Her feelings never went beyond a friend’s caring while mine quickly turned into love. I know now that I never really loved her but I loved the image I had made of her in my mind; the strong woman who saved many lives on the operation table and through her speeches about mutants.

Ororo have often been a closer friend than Jean ever was. She understood all what went through my head. Well, as much as she could without knowing of my past anyway. She has always been a true and kind friend. She was also the first to tell me that my fascination with Jean wasn’t who I was. That she wasn’t right for me. Then I didn’t believe her. Didn’t want to. She have always been a close friend to Jean as well but in this matter she was mad at her, saying Jean was using me. Looking back I see she was right but I was using her too. I needed someone to love and so I lay all my love on her even though I could never tell her. I wanted someone to love me back and so when we were in public and Jean acted the part; I dreamed myself into a fantasy where she truly loved me and it wasn’t just all a game we both played.

Looking back, I regret what I did and how we acted. We should have been honest and just admitted that we were never meant to be. Charles was happy for me when Jean and I started going out together because then I wasn’t alone but he also warned me that he didn’t think this was right for me and wanted me to break it off. It was the first time I didn’t obey him and I regret that now. I should have listened but I didn’t. 

I knew deep down even though I wouldn’t admit it and I know it now; I was manhandled….with carelessness.

Part 4:

When I turned twenty-three my life changed forever and this time for the better. Logan came to the mansion. At first I fought my feelings. They were too strong for me to handle and I wasn’t ready to voice them. So, I let him go, drive away on my motorcycle and out of my life. I wondered if he knew that that bike had been my first and only birthday gift ever. Eric and Charles had given it to me for my eighteen’s birthday sometime in autumn. They had picked a random day to give it to me as, as I said, I don’t know my birthday. It had been a Thursday and I came home from High School. I was still a little behind in my knowledge but I was coming after it. Charles and Eric had really done a lot for me. The entire mansion had been decorated and I even got a birthday cake. It was the best day of my life. Well, up to that day anyway. Soon after Eric and Charles broke up and Charles and I drifted apart. It was the last birthday gift I got for years.

So, when Logan left I wondered if he knew the importance of the bike. If he knew what the gesture of me allowing him to take it with him to Canada meant. After he had left I did a lot of thinking and I decided that I couldn’t live with Jean anymore. It had always been a false relationship but now even more so. She had found someone in town, also a doctor, who she wished to stay with and I had Logan on my mind. So, we parted. I tried to make life go on, filling it with X-men missions and school reports for the students but nothing worked. I kept remembered his face and the way he made me feel. He was and still is the only person who can make me laugh. I remembered him in the statue and how I laughed at him given the metal detector the finger. I missed the feelings he gave me. True, he often annoyed the Hell out of me but in his nearness I felt safe and protected for the first time in my life.

Logan came back six months later and I only just remembered not to run into his arms in the last moment. For some five months we walked around each other, neither one knowing what to do. Logan took the first step, as I expected him to. We went out a few times and it was really nice. I always felt at ease with him. Logan is the blunt type so soon after he told me that he wanted me. I admitted that the feeling was mutual but I wished more emotion from his side. I wished something more. Ororo supported me full time here when we continued dating and first one year later, when he had told me the three words I had waited for so long, did we move in together. To this day I’m still not sure why I was so fast to admit my feelings to Logan. I still haven’t said in spoken words that I love Charles and I certainly never said it to Jean. But then both are telepaths so I have a feeling they know. I guess I told him because he made me feel safe and protected. After what I have been through I needed that.

After five years together we brought a small house not far from the mansion so I could still teach there. Logan got a job and things truly was great. Many of our friends married and even Marie…..I mean Rogue. Most have spent too much time with Logan. He is the only one who still calls her by her given name. Anyway, she married Remy, a charming, young Cajun who had come to the school one year after her. At first they did have some big arguments about her inability to touch as she made it an issue and he not but when Remy’s powers grew so he could touch her, they had a perfect relationship. Not as perfect as mine and Logan’s, mind you. Nothing on Earth can be that wonderful but close. Logan even came to accept Remy. Over time, of course. Rogue was his little girl and a father always has a hard time letting go. Charles had the same problem when I said I was moving out of the mansion with Logan. He only reluctantly accepted it. He is much happier now though and for that I’m very glad. Eric had an accident a few weeks back and nearly died. Charles went to him and formed a permanent telepathic link with him and so saved him. This link permits them to share all feelings and thoughts and with such openness it was inevitable that they should go back together. I have never seen any of them so happy and that makes me smile.

My time with Logan has been wonderful and I regret nothing. He has loved me like none other and he is always there for me. He protects me, as I knew he would and he makes me feel safe and special. He trusts me so much that some times he’ll lift my glasses and gently kiss my eyelids, even though he knows that if I open my eyes I’ll kill him. He trusts me with his life and his love as I do with him and that is the greatest gift I have ever been given. He has showed me the deep of trust, the flame of passion, the nature of being safe and the warmth of love. With him, I’m always in Heaven and never alone. 

He is the other part of my soul. I can tell him anything and he understands. I can come to him with problems and he’ll solve them. Ok, often with a deadly outcome for whoever has hurt me but that’s Logan. My Logan. Just to say that is a miracle in itself and I feel very blessed. He always listens to me and my opinion always comes into account. He will protect me with his life and there is no safer place than in his arms. He never hides or plays games with me or my feelings. Our love is always present and always spoken. With him, I need no one else and I need no more gifts for the rest of my life for I have been granted the greatest gift of all; him to love and his love in return. 

Looking back I know that my life with Logan have been and will continue to be the happiest years of my life. I have made a choice and I don’t regret it. I want to be with him. Together. Forever. Because I know that even if I was manhandled….I’ll be manhandled…..with care.

The End


End file.
